Red pudding is a beloved Scottish meat pudding made with beef, bacon, pork, suet, and spices, deep-fried and served with chips. It has a similar cousin, a red-wrapped pork sausage, and a drier black pudding made with blood, onion, meat, and oatmeal.
Nothing makes a Scotsman’s heart more joyful than the prince among sausage foods, red pudding. A basic list of ingredients is enough to make anyone know what cholesterol is, but arguably any food that makes dinner outrageous must be good for the heart. Anyone who has ever had a craving for this type of meat pudding knows what a hidden treasure it is. It is virtually unobtainable except in a few fish and chip shops in Scotland, although other types of blood sausage are available in cuisines across Europe and the Mediterranean.
A true Scottish red pudding is a festival of meat, meat and a little more meat. Beef, bacon and other cuts of pork hold the fort, while suet, beef fat and rind protect the diner from the remote possibility of sudden weight loss. A range of spices round out the recipe, which is then deep-fried after pounding or sliced and deep-fried.
Another sausage that bears the same name but has some differences is a popular Scottish breakfast food. This type of red pudding was the wonderful creation of German immigrants who brought with them a love of very well-cured, highly ground pork. It wears a red wrap and is best friends with an egg or two on a breakfast plate.
The multi-meat red pudding doesn’t have a sausage casing as delicious as its kinder cousin, the other red salami. If it’s not encased at all, it’s dressed in a thick batter after it’s patted into a long, narrow sausage-like shape and fried. The inedible batter wrapper not only protects the pudding in the fryer, but keeps the meat warm and protected as it’s transported home.
Scots looking for a snack will request a single red, which simply means the pudding with no sides. Those with a bloated belly or a craving for some truly delicious cardiac arrest order a red pudding dinner. This one will come with a wonderfully greasy bag of what Americans call French fries and everyone else calls potato chips.
Most everyone likes a good red pudding, although the Vampires and tougher Scots also like black pudding and aren’t kidding when they announce it’s damn good. Black pudding is made up of blood and lots of it, combined with fillers like onion, meat, and oatmeal or bread to hold all that blood together. Unlike its redder relative, black pudding is quite dry.
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